Chapter 452: Preparation for "Ball Flash"

Chapter 452: Preparation for "Ball Flash"

Chapter 452: Preparation for "Ball Flash"
In early August, after the release of "Wolf Warrior 8" and the celebration banquet were held, most of the preliminary preparations for "Ball Lightning" were also completed.

First of all, the 3D dynamic storyboard designed according to the script was basically completed after 5 months of polishing. At the same time, the design of the special effects scene effects related to the movie was also preliminarily finalized. These are the two most important tasks in the early stages of Galaxy Pictures' shooting and production of science fiction movies.

Thanks to the maturity of Galaxy Group's film industrialization system, they are the only mainland film and television companies that can accomplish this step in the early preparation stage.

For other film and television companies, a project is usually launched based on an idea from a director/actor/screenwriter. The better ones will just come up with a script, project plan and PPT, and then bring in some well-known directors and actors to start working on it.

The Galaxy Group is extremely formal. The 3D dynamic storyboard alone already has a general outline of a film project, and you can see the content flow of the story more intuitively.

With this 3D dynamic storyboard, the storyboard script can basically be discarded. Based on this, the project plan and project budget can be easily completed, and the shooting task plan has even been planned and compiled.

Once these things were brought out, investors such as Huaying, Moying, Sony Pictures, and Columbia Pictures were extremely relieved and satisfied.

Although the works of "Galaxy Cinematic Universe" are now the top projects in the industry, with the best investment-income ratio and project stability, as long as the news gets out, there will be companies waving their money to get involved.

However, it is impossible for the Galaxy Group to become arrogant and fool investors by relying on the popularity of its projects. The more times like this, the more they need to demonstrate their professionalism as a large company, rather than being like those makeshift teams.

Complete and comprehensive preliminary preparations can enable investors to more clearly understand the advantages of the project and the situation of the entire project, so that they will feel more at ease.

Other companies in China's film, television and entertainment circles are now feeling the pressure because of the Galaxy Group's meticulous approach. Some investors, especially those new to the Internet industry, have begun to require those film and television companies to follow the Galaxy Group's pre-preparation standards.

It can be said that the Galaxy Group is forcing the industry to upgrade its management and technology. The reckless practices of the past during the industry's rapid development period are becoming increasingly unfeasible today.

With these well-prepared preliminary materials, funding will naturally not be a problem.

As a big-budget science fiction film, the production cost of "Ball Lightning" will be higher than that of "Wolf Warrior 2", and the demand for special effects is almost on par with "Gravity".

According to Galaxy Pictures' plan and budget, the production cost of the entire project is as high as 4 million Chinese yuan, the publicity and promotion cost is nearly 1 million, and the total cost is 5 million.

Of course, if you really calculate this amount carefully, it is still far less than that of Hollywood's top special effects blockbusters, and it is not much higher than some domestic blockbusters.

For example, the film "The Mermaid" that Zhou Xingchi is currently preparing to produce is said to have a production cost of 4 million.

However, their 4 million is different from the 4 million of Galaxy Group. A major advantage of the film industrialization is cost reduction and efficiency improvement.

First of all, in terms of actors' pay, Galaxy Group has great bargaining power. Actors would rather lower their pay to appear in their movies, especially those in the Galaxy Cinematic Universe.

And it doesn’t matter if the pay is low in the early stages, the income at the end is enough to satisfy them. Didn’t Wang Zhi, the heroine of Wolf Warrior 2, receive a large sum of money just because her action figures are hot-selling?

In addition, another major cost item is equipment, venues, props, and costumes. Galaxy Cinema owns their own products, as do all the supporting equipment and prop companies within the company. For 3D cameras alone, Galaxy Group cooperated with Sony and purchased several of them, so the cost in this regard is also kept to an extremely low level.

As for special effects, Galaxy Group had already started to build its own rendering farm and special effects material library when filming "Wolf Warrior 1".

Subsequently, after the accumulation of works in the same series such as "Inception", "Transcendence", "Gravity" and "Wolf Warrior 2", the workload of relevant special effects staff was greatly reduced and the timeliness was greatly improved.

For the same special effects scene, other Chinese film and television companies would get a quote of US$1 from Hollywood special effects companies, but would only get a quote of 5 Chinese yuan from Galaxy Group's special effects companies.

Their internal quotation for the company's projects may only cost 4 Chinese yuan, so the special effects department can still make money.

So the production cost of "Ball Lightning" is said to be 4 million, which is similar to Stephen Chow's "The Mermaid", but its effect is definitely better than "The Mermaid" which cost 8 million to produce.

With the funds in place, they were transferred to special bank accounts by several companies including Huaying. The preliminary preparations were basically completed, and the next step was to naturally start forming a crew.

In this aspect of work, Wang Hao still did not intervene much in the formation of the behind-the-scenes team at the beginning. He just finalized the candidates for the heads of several important functional departments, such as photography, special effects, action, art, and music, and they must have looked for big names in the industry.

As for the others, Galaxy Group directly posted the "Ball Lightning" crew preparation and recruitment announcement on the Good Production Network. Any behind-the-scenes practitioners who meet the relevant requirements can submit their resumes to compete for the job.

This work started in June and lasted for a month. After several rounds of screening, Galaxy Pictures selected the best of the best and finally completed the formation of the project crew. The core behind-the-scenes team members are as high as 6 people, and a quarter of them are formal employees of Galaxy Group.

As for the total number of crew members including temporary members, it may exceed 10,000.

This is no joke. You have to know that although "Ball Lightning" is a science fiction film, it contains many war elements, and the strong support of the military will be needed.

When the core behind-the-scenes team of the crew was formed, Wang Hao finally finished some of the more important work of the company and devoted more energy to his new film project.

The most important thing at this time is the casting of actors for "Ball Lightning".

There are many characters in the original story of "Ball Lightning", and the story is described in the first person. The protagonist has only one surname, and is called "Dr. Chen".

Because of this, Wang Hao and the screenwriter team made an adaptation and merged this "Dr. Chen" and "Dr. Chen Ang" together.

Therefore, the part about "Dr. Chen" in the movie became the past experience of Dr. Chen Ang.

At this time, the first thing to find is an actor who can play the young Dr. Chen.

The first requirement in this regard is that he has to have a certain similarity in appearance with Mr. Wang Zhiwen, who plays the middle-aged Dr. Chen, and his acting skills must also be acceptable.

After internal screening at Good Production Network, several young male actors were soon invited to audition for the "Ball Lightning" crew, and Li Jian eventually got the role.

Of course, this Li Jian is not the one who sings, but the one who was born in 1981 and graduated from the Beijing Film Academy. Last year, he starred in the urban emotional drama "The Mother-in-law of the Only Child" with Tong Yao, Zhang Chenguang and others, and will play Li Xiang in "The Storm" in the future. Judging from the introduction alone, he has a rich acting experience, and his acting skills during the interview are also good enough. It's just that his face is a little more regular, which is a bit different from Dr. Chen, who is both good and evil as played by Wang Zhiwen.

But the young Dr. Chen has not yet turned to evil. After all, there is a process of psychological transformation of the character, so there is nothing wrong with it.

The actors for both versions of Dr. Chen have been confirmed, and there is another equally important male character, that is Dr. Ding Yiding.

He also has a lot of roles in "Ball Lightning". In the original novel, he is the second male lead after Dr. Chen. He has played a crucial role in the research and development of ball lightning, macro-atoms and quantum fields.

At the same time, he is extremely charming, free and easy, unrestrained but also a genius. He not only has two doctorates in philosophy and quantum physics, but also a master's degree in mathematics. He is also the youngest academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was the chief scientist of the National Neutron Decay Research Project and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics for his research on the neutron decay project.

Because Dr. Chen has gone abroad, in Wang Hao's version of the movie "Ball Lightning", Professor Ding Yi was mentioned to a position of equal importance as Dr. Chen, and can be said to be one of the two male protagonists.

This character had actually appeared before in the post-credits scene of the movie "Source Code", and the actor who played the role at that time was Mr. Wang Jinsong.

Teacher Wang Jinsong is also a veteran actor, only one year younger than Teacher Wang Zhiwen. He is from Wuxi, JS Province. He graduated from the JS Provincial Academy of Drama and later joined the Jinling City Repertory Theatre and began his acting career.

In 1988, Mr. Wang played the role of Xu Jingnian from the Department of Architecture in the short play "Qinhuai Family". He then starred in the movie "Wandering", the Republican drama "The New Gone with the Wind", etc.

In 1999, Wang Jinsong participated in the filming of the TV series "Waiting for Your Return". Because of the drama, he met the actor Fu Biao and was invited by him to come to Beijing to develop.

In 2007, the costume drama "The Ming Dynasty 1566" was broadcast. This drama can be regarded as a landmark event in the history of TV dramas. Although the broadcast performance was not good, the plot was absolutely impeccable.

Finding great actors in this play is like finding a PhD in Zhongguancun or a top student in Peking University or Tsinghua University.

However, among this group of drama stars, Mr. Wang Jinsong still blew up the ceiling of the word "acting skills" with his performance, and portrayed a fictional historical figure like Yang Jinshui vividly.

Especially this character's versatility and ability to get along with everyone in the early stage, as well as his madness in the later stage, which seemed real and fake, was truly amazing.

Therefore, with his acting skills, it is not a problem for him to vividly portray a graceful and senior intellectual like Ding Yi.

As for the youthful image of Dr. Ding Yi, Galaxy Group has also found a suitable candidate, Bai Jingting.

Yes, it is Bai Jingting who played Qin Feng in "Detective Chinatown". He and Mr. Wang Jinsong do look somewhat similar.

As for whether Bai Jingting's role as Qin Feng and then as the young Ding Yi would cause confusion, that's not a big deal.

On the one hand, the setting and shooting style in "Ball Lightning" will be somewhat different from those in "Detective Chinatown", and the audience may not be able to react to it when watching the movie.

On the other hand, it doesn't matter even if he reacts, because the plot of "Ball Lightning" will also give an explanation for why Qin Feng is so similar to Ding Yi when he was young.

Anyway, the most important male protagonist in "Ball Lightning" has been confirmed. In addition to Dr. Chen and Ding Yi, there is another relatively important female character in this movie, that is Lin Yun.

This is a woman who became fanatical about weapons research and development because her mother died in a weapons attack. She once studied ball lightning with Dr. Chen and Ding Yi and promoted its militarization.

According to the description in the original novel of "Ball Lightning", Lin Yun should be a woman whose appearance is quite deceptive.

Her elegance is her domineering, her cunning is her fortitude, her persistence and rationality are naturally integrated, she lives almost her whole life in her purpose and lives more clearly and detachedly than anyone else.
As a scheming and mature young girl, Lin Yun can be said to play a very distinctive and challenging role.

As for this role, naturally, there are a lot of female stars who want to get it.

Unfortunately, like the older Ding Yi and Chen Ang, the role of Lin Yun had already been determined during the script writing process. That role was Wan Qian, who had previously played many roles in several works of the Galaxy Cinematic Universe.

As for why she played Lin Yun again, the twists and turns in the story are naturally inseparable from Dr. Chen.

Of course, although it makes sense for Wan Qian to play Lin Yun in the script, some people don't think so.

"Why is Wan Qian acting in this movie again? Didn't she play Q in the movie universe? Using the same actor for different roles, won't there be confusion?"

Wang Hao, who had just finished taking a shower and walked out of the bathroom, was immediately greeted by Jing Tian’s questions.

Of course, when Jing Tian asked this question, her tone and expression were still very normal, at least in Wang Hao's opinion. After all, she had a facial mask on her face, her eyes were closed, and she was lying on the massage chair, looking quite nonchalant and calm.

But Wang Hao was alarmed when he heard this. Fortunately, as an international director, he was not only good at training actors, but also had good acting skills. He smiled and asked back:
"Why, are you jealous or do you feel a sense of crisis?"

Jing Tian now opened her eyes and gave him a sidelong glance with a pouty look.

"Why would I be jealous? Some of them are internationally renowned directors, and every day young and beautiful female stars rush to throw themselves at them. How dare I be jealous?"

Wang Hao laughed when he heard this.

"Since my sister is jealous, why don't you hurry up and sleep with me so that we can have a baby boy or girl."

After saying that, he turned into a tiger and pounced towards Jing Tian.

For a moment, the room was filled with spring atmosphere, and naturally no one mentioned the matter concerning the ex-girlfriend.

(End of this chapter)